perhaps the oldest poem. I had an idea of writing a ‘Job,’ but I found it too sublime. There is no poetry to be compared with it.”
I told him that Japhet’s soliloquy in ‘Heaven and Earth,’ and address to the mountains of Caucasus, strongly resembled Faust’s.
“I shall have commentators enough by and by,” said he, “to dissect my thoughts, and find owners for them.”
“When I first saw the review of my ‘Hours of Idleness,’[1] I was furious; in such a rage as I never have been in since.
“I dined that day with Scroope Davies, and drank three bottles of claret to drown it; but it only boiled the more. That critique was a masterpiece of low wit, a tissue of scurrilous abuse. I remember there was a great deal of vulgar trash in it which was meant for humour, ‘about people being thankful for what they could get,’—‘not
- ↑ Written in 1808.
